
Gass F ^ 
Book J 




s^- 



A DISCOURSE, 




met'. 



DELIVERED BY THE 



mi 



AT CANAAN CENTER, 

APRIL 19, 1865, ^ ^ Cg 



On the occasion of the Funeral Obsequies of our late 
President, Abraham Lincoln. 



PUBLISHED BY SPECIA.L REQUEST. 



REPUBLICAN STEAM POWER PRESS, AVOOSTER, OUIO. 
1865. 




A DISCOURSE, 



DELIVERED BY THE 



REV. T. H. BARR, 

AT CANAAN CENTER, 



APRIL. 19, 1S65, 



On the occasion of the Funeral Obsequies of our late 
President, Abraham Lincoln. 



PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL REQUEST. 



UEPl BLICAN STEAM POWER PRESS, WOOSTEU, OHIO, 

1865. 






CORRESPOJSTDEISrCE. 



Rev. T. H. Barr, 

Sir : — Believing that the discourse delivered by 
you at Canaan Center, on the 19th inst., would, by its general 
circulation, have a beneficial influence, we respectfully request 
the same of you for publication. 

ISAAC NOTESTINE. 

J. H. WALLACE. 

THOMAS KEENEY. 

CALVIN ARMSTRON(J. 

JAS. A. McCOY. 

C, G. CRANE. 

J. H. POLLOCK. 

J. HOUGH. 

WM. P. VAN DOORN. 



Messrs. Isaac Notestine, J. H. Wallace, Thomas Keeney, 
Calvin Armstrong, Jas. A. McCoy, C. G. Crane, J. H. 
Pollock, J. Hough and'Wm. P. Van Doorn, 

Gentlemen : — I acknowledge with feelings of 
gratification your kind note of the 19th inst., and on reflection 
have concluded to defer to your, perhaps too partial, judgment, 
and submit the discourse to your disposal. 

With highest regards, I remain truly yours, 

T. H. BARR. 
Canaan, April, 1865. 



A DISCOURSE, 

BY THE 



We ought to endeavor to rise in our conceptions to the great- 
ness and solemnity of the occasion on which we have met. We 
are but a fragment of one vast assembly, from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf, which at this hour stand 
mourning in worship before Goa under a great national calamity. 
I know no more appropriate words in which to bring the occa- 
sion and object of this meeting before you than these, taken from 
the pathetic lament of David over the death of Abner, assassi- 
nated by the hand of Joab : ^'■Know ye not that there is a prince 
and a great man fallen ?" 

The mighty are fallen in the high places and an afflicted nation 
is bowed in mourning. Abraham Lincolx, President of the 
United States, is dead, cruelly, basely murdered by a wicked assas- 
sin, in the capital of the nation, in the midst of the rejoicings of a 
loyal people over the triumphs that God has given us through 
his instrumentality, in the high position to which the voice of a 
free nation had called him. We are invited by the highest au- 
thority in the land to meet at this time and manifest our sense of 
the nation's loss by appropriate religious exercises. It is no 
common occasion on which we are met. This is no common 
funeral. We have before been called as a nation to mourn the 
death of Chief Magistrates, snatched away while in the chair of 
office. The drapery of mourning has hung over the land for a 
Harrison and a Taylor. But great as was the loss occasioned 
by their death, and deeply as they were mourned, in the cause 



and manner of their death thoro was no outrage done the na- 
tion's feelings — no indignity, no insult offered its honor and au- 
thority. Had our lamented President fallen by disease, or the 
common casualties to which human life is exposed, it would still 
become the nation to lie in the dust and mourn. That he should 
fall by the bloody hand of an assassin — the victim of a deep laid, 
desperate conspiracy against the life and majesty of the nation 
represented by him, calls for deeper humiliation and profounder 
sorrow. 

Truly a great — and even by the confession of his enemies, a 
good man — has fallen in our high places. If he was not greater 
than thousands of others in natural talents and personal endow- 
ments, none can deny that he was great in official position and 
dignity ; great in the responsibilities that rested on him, and the 
invaluable interests staked in him for the loyal millions of our 
own land, and for humanity. The murderous hand that struck- 
him down, struck at the common rights and liberty of man. The 
assassin's bullet that was aimed at him was aimed at the author- 
ity, the honor and the life of the nation, and againsk the au- 
thority and majesty of God. In view of the bloody tragedy thus 
enacted in the face of the nation, let all partizan feelings be laid 
aside. Let all feel and speak and act as the enormity of the 
crime demands *, as having a common interest in the perpetuity 
and honor of the nation, a common duty in maintaining law and 
order, and upholding the principles of morality and religion. 

My convictions of truth, based on numerous and impartial ev- 
idences, constrain me to say that our beloved and lamented Pres- 
ident was no common man in natural ability and attainment in 
the qualities that constitute the true statesman. The gold may 
have been encrusted with some quartz, but it was the pure metal. 
The diamond may not have been so nicely cut or so finely pol- 
ished as it might have been, but it was a gem of the first water. 
He was liable to err because he was merely a man, but his mis- 
takes were few and unimportant compared with his many acts of 
wise, far-reaching and beneficent statesmanship. His action and 
course on one single matter — the complicated and beyond doubt 
the bitter root of all our troubles. Slavery — which he was led to 
take after much hesitancy and travel of soul, will entitle him to 
rank among the first of statesmen. 



LB S '12 



He was called, in tlie Providence of God, to no common task 
of statesmanship, in a time of no common confusion and peril. 
Few men, if any, in the world's history, have been called to the 
kingdom at such a time as he was. He was placed at the helm 
when the ship of State, either through weakness or treachery, 
was drifting among rocks and hidden shoals, tost and wrenched 
in erery joint by the raging waves of party and opposing currents 
of conflicting interests. Most on board were confounded and 
paralyzed by fear, and the rest were treacherous or in open mu- 
tiny. Our hereditary enemies and the minions of Monarchy 
were already exulting that the vessel, freighted with the world's 
last hope of liberty and Republican government was water-logged 
and foundering, and gave their moral, and as far as they dared 
their material, influence to make sure what they so eagerly de- 
sired and hoped for. Thank. God! their exultation and efforts 
were equally vain. We can even now see that it was to test and 
manifest the strength of the ship and its ability to weather 
through a tempest that would have shattered and sunk the proud- 
est government of the old world. It was to make it necessary 
to throw overboard some lading that ought not to have been 
there, and which might one day have sunk her, even in an open 
and a calm sea. 

To succeed in righting the ship in such condition — piloting it 
safely through the shoals and rocks to an open sea — restoring 
order and subordination on board — renewing rigging and sails 
and spreading them to a fair wind, and starting her again rejoic- 
ing on her course, is what no mere demagogue could do, and 
what God never called a weak and incompetent man to do. An 
exception might seem to lie where a people had filled up their 
cup of iniquity and God designed to destroy them. But even 
th«n his more ordinary method of procedure is "to destroy the 
wisdom of the wise and bring to nothingness the understanding 
of the prudent." Yet, und»r God, Abraham Lincoln, with 
those whom he selected to act with and under him, has brought 
this nation through the most fearful struggle for life that eve? a 
nation was called to pass through, and restored us to peace un- 
shattered, or so nearly restored us as to thrill with joyful hope 
the heart of every loyal man and woman, and even make glad 
thousands that are not. This makes good his title to take rank 
among the wise and great. 



6 

As a Christian and a Calvinist, I must come to the same conclu- 
sion. God governs the world, and he governs it by wisely selecting 
and using suitable agents and instruments. He does not raise 
up and place at the head of victorious armies men weak in head 
and heart. Neither does he call imbeciles or poltroons to save 
a sinking nation or found an empire. He selects or fits the in- 
strument for the work — the agent for the task. When I look at 
the task this man was called of God to do, and how nearly he 
accomplished and how well he did his part, I feel that it would 
be impeaching the wisdom of the Supreme Ruler to deny that 
the man he chose for the work was an eminently wise and com- 
petent statesman. Great men, however, may be bad men. Em- 
inent statesmen have sometimes been eminently wicked. But it 
was not so with the statesman whom the nations mourn to-day. 
He was eminent for goodness and kindness of heart. His very 
faults, so far as he erred in his public duti«s, had their origin in 
these traits. If, through their own professions of loyalty, or the 
Bolicitations of their friends, he placed traitors in heart to posts 
of important trusts, it was because he was so honest himself. H 
he failed to deal with sufficient sternness with the rebels and their 
abetters, it was because his nature was so kind, and forgiving. 
He was to a proverb what one of the English classics calls thn 
crowning work of God — "An honest man." Such not merely 
in the judgment of partial friends and interested partizans, but 
such in the judgment of the disinterested and impartial, and by 
the confessions of his enemies. in both sections of our land and 
beyond the Sea. I think it within the bounds of sober truth to 
say that the like accumulation and concurrence of evidence as to 
the possession of these qualities by our lamented President, 
never before entered into the person of any statesman. I will 
not insult the memory of the dead by adducing further proof of 
this. It will only be denied by the reckless portion or the in- 
curably prejudiced. 

For such a man the nation sits in mourning. The sun of his 
public career has inceed gone down at noon, but for him it sits 
in glory. The only gem wanting in his coronet of honor was 
martyrdom for his country and human liberty. His death sup- 
plied it. 

Were it for me to propose the epitaph to be graven on the mar- 



ble that shall point the stranger to his grave, I would say, let it 
be written without addition and without date, Lincoln, the 
Honest Statesman. There never was and never will be but one 
Lincoln, and the time and cause of his death any child will tell 
you while the nation exists. Such are my settled and hcnest 
convictions in regard to him whose funeral obsequies we cele- 
brate. I am fallable and may be wrong, but with my present 
light I am willing to stand by them. 

The tragical death of our Chief Magistrate is moving the heart 
of the nation as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind. 
It is right. The heart that is not moved thereby is stone— the 
heart that cherishes complacency or joy in view of it, is worse. 
It is right that the heart of the people should be moved, and it is 
important that this uprising of feeling should be rightly and in- 
telligently directed, to right ends and in a right manner. 

There are others to whom it belongs to set before the nation 
and the world the civil and political consequences of the sad 
event, and direct to the proper civil and political action in the 
case. I assume no such task. But when the judgment of God 
is thus upon the nation does it become the church of God to be 
silent and indifferent? Must the ministers of the Gospel be 
dumb ? May they not point to the judgment and show the hand 
of God in it, and call upon men to consider it aright, why it was 
sent and what they ought to do morally and religiously in view of 
it ? When the great deep of human feeling is heaving and surg- 
ing, must the lips of Christ's ministers be sealed, and leave it 
entirely to politicians and men of the world to guide this tide of 
feeling and tell men in what light to look at things, how they 
ought to regulate their feelings, and what they ought to do, and 
how ? Is the mind and will of God in these things not to be 
heard or regarded ? Where is his mind and will to be looked 
for if not in his word? If ministers are not to explain, apply 
and enforce that word in all its bearings on the relations, inter- 
ests and duties of men, what, I would ask, are they for? 

On these points I cannot understand how Christian men can 
differ. As I understand the duty of a minister of the Gospel, it 
is wrong to pass such awful providences in silence and not call 
the attention of men to look at them in a moral and religious 
light. They have it in solemn charge not only to point out the 



way of salvation to men, but to tell them how the}' ought to live 
and act ; to inculcate the rules and principles of morality from 
the word of God ; to hold up to the light, for abhorrence and con- 
demnation, the crimes and wickedness of men, without respect of 
persons or station. With such convictions I would do what in me 
lies to have you view and feel aright in regard to this great wick- 
edness that has been donein the land. If this deed of treach- 
ery and blood does not draw out the united, hearty and indignant 
condemnation of the moral and Christian people of this nation, 
we may well tremble for the safety and continuance of our 
heaven-given government, all our social and religious institutions, 
and we may prepare for confusion and every evil work. It is 
not enough that we shudder at and condemn the deed in our 
hearts. We are in duty bound to speak out, to let our abhor- 
rence of it be known clearly, decidedly and unequivocally. To 
be neutral is to approve the crime. If you are a Christian you 
are one of God's called and commissioned witnesses. You are 
to bear testimony for God not only to the truth but against the 
violations of his law, against crime ot every degree. And the 
more terrible and heaven- daring the wickedness, the more 
prompt, clear and decided ought your testimony to be. This is 
one of those clear cases in which good men ought to be found 
standing together on the same side, bearing the same testimony. 
We ought to have ourselves, and help others to have, right views 
of the nature and magnitude of the atrocious deed that to-day 
shrouds the nation in mourning. 

It IS no common deed of wickedness whether we consider its 
nature and circumstances or the designed consequences of it to 
the nation. It is not easy to grasp it in its]full dimensions. We 
cannot readily take it in, in its full extent. It is one of those 
crimes that nations are shaken with only after the intervals of 
centuries, and in times of darkness and violence. In our coun- 
try heretofore we have known and spoken of it as a thing of his- 
tory. That it should be repeated in this stage of the world's 
advancement in Christian knowledge and civilization, of natural 
refinement and respect for government and law, that it should 
take place on such a theatre, under such a government, at such 
a time, when we are on trial before the world as to the fact 
whether a free and intelligent people can govern themselves. 



these things, and others like ihem, stamp it a crime of the great- 
est enormity — the crime of the aoe. No nation on the face 
of the earth could less afford to have it perpetrated in their 
midst, when we look at the principles of our government and 
the emergencies that are upon us. It is not simply that we have 
been deprived of an able and faithful ruler. That has often hap- 
pened to other nations, has often iiappened to ourselves, is hap- 
pening constantly, because the wise and good cannot live forever. 
It is the reason why it was done, and the unmitigated baseness 
of the manner of it, that should startle and arouse every Amer- 
ican citizen. It was done in violation and contempt ol and with 
the design to overthrow and destroy the fundamental principles 
upon which our governmen* rests — the right of the people to 
govern themselves, to choose their own rulers and make their 
own laws, and that the will of the majority, constitutionally ex- 
pressed, is the LAW. Our murdered President died a martyr to 
these principles. If we palliate or justify his assassination, we 
abandon and renounce these principles which as a nation we have 
gloried in, and to purchase and maintain which rivers of blood 
have flowed and thousands of precious lives have been sacrificed. 
I solemnly believe this to be true, spite of the contradictions of 
sophistry and prejudice, and therefore call on you to denounce 
this atrocious deed. 

The crime is aggravated by the interests of the millions repre- 
sented by the Chief Magistrate who has been murdered. It was 
not the man Abraham Ljstcoln alone that was struck by the as- 
sassin's bullet. It was aimed at the millions of law-abiding and 
loyal citizens of this great nation. This flows not only nor main- 
ly from the theory of our government, but is the clear teachings 
of the Bible. Legitimate rulers represent and stand as it were 
iu the place of the people governed. Hence the people are pun- 
ished for the sins of the rulers, and the rulers for the sins of the 
people. The lives, the honor, the material interests of every 
good citizen, so far as government can go, was vested in, held in 
trust and represented by our lamented President as the head of 
the nation. It was because he held that position that he was 
marked for death. Had the power been equal to the design and 
uncontrolled tendency of the act, all the vested interests of the 
American people as loyal citizens Avould have fallen with him. 



10 

Tliat they did nol is due to the want of powor and not to the want 
of will. God takes the will for the deed, and will judge men 
accordingly. 

We have not brought to your attention circumstances attending 
the mournful event of a personal and private nature. These are 
no more than has been in thousands of other cases, and perhaps 
less aggravating and affecting. It is not these things that make 
it national indignity and injury, and call for national indignation 
and mourning. 

There is still another thought demanding our serious attention. 
In permitting the nation to be deprived of her highest civil ruler, 
God has spoken to this people in trumpet tones. What does it 
mean? What does it portend? We cannot read the secret 
counsels of Heaven, or presume to determine whether he de- 
signs to overrule it for mercy or for wrath to the nation. He 
can do either. ''He can make the wrath of man to praise him, 
and the remainder he can restrain." But although we cannot 
tell what results are to follow these things, there are some obvi- 
ous duties to which this nation, and especially the Christian por- 
tion of it, are called by the event : 

1. To acknowledge the hand of God in it. We are to own his 
agency in what he permits, as well as in what he does. If God 
had not permitted it, it could not have taken place. ''He doth 
according to his pleasure in the armies of Heaven, and among 
the inhabitants of the earth." He permitted it as he permitted 
the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews by 
Nebuchadnezzer, the proud ambitious king of Babylon ; as he 
permitted the betrayal of Christ by Judas, and his crucifixion by 
the scribes and elders. 

2. We are called to humble ourselves under the mighty hand 
of God, and to confess yet again our sins. We have been called 
to this duty, during the past four years, both by the voice of 
Providence and the call of him who will no more call the nation 
to acknowledge the hand of God in sorrow or in joy ; under re- 
verses or in the midst of victories. In public and official docu- 
ments, by the highest authorities of the nation, this has been re- 
peatedly done. The people have responded to these calls with 
promptness and apparent fervor. It would argue too great a want 
of charity to set all this down as a mere outward form — hypo- 



I 



11 

critical mockery. That there has been much sincere humiliation 
and acknowledgment of our national sins before God by thousands 
in our land and by a goodly number in the highest positions civil 
and military, cannot be more reasonably doubted than we can 
doubt that God has a church in the land. It would be equally 
faithless and ungrateful to think and say that it has all been in 
vain. We have had, many times, reason to say with Israel, ''If 
it had not been the Lord who was on our side when men rose up 
against us, then they had swallowed us up quick when their 
wrath was kindled against us. ' ' And it was while the nation was 
singing "The Lord has done great thing for us whereof we are 
glad," that the shadow of this great calamity has fallen upon us. 
Still we should turn to God, confess our sins and seek forgive- 
ness and help from him. He has been our nation's help in ages 
past, and he may be so for years to come. Let us then adopt the 
language of the Psalmist, "Why art thou cast down, my soul, 
and why art thou disgusted within me ? Hope thou in God for 
I shall yet praise him, for he is the help of my countenance, and 
my God." He may lay calamities upon us, and cause men to go 
over us shod, yet surely he will not utterly forsake us and give 
us over to destruction. Let us then say, in the confidence of 
humble faith and hope, with the church of old, "'Our help is in 
the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth." 



